From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Tue Nov 18 2003 - 09:16:46 EST
Chuck,
Thanks for our calling attention to the book by Caporale. As I see it, her
thesis calls for a greater appreciation of the evolutionary role played by
variations in the whole genome, a phenomenon far more comprehensive than the
point mutations allowed in super-gradualistic caricatures of biological
evolution.
You say,
> Given the book's apparent acceptance of Darwinian natural selection
> ("unassisted," even), I'm a little surprised that ISCID is so interested.
> Perhaps ISCID's interest in this comes from the possibility of
> scientifically demonstrating that not all mutations are random, at least
> not in every conceivable probability distribution (i.e., might be
> non-random with respect to genomic region, but random with respect to
> whether or not a coding reading frame is shifted by the mutation in that
> region).
Is it the case that mutational randomness is under attack by Caporale? Or is
she instead pointing to the need to see how the line that successfully
multiplies depends on the entire genome being explored in genetic
phase-space, and not merely on some single adaptive factor? It's the latter
that makes more sense to me at the moment. Exploratory variations are
occurring not merely at the level of point mutations, and not merely at the
single-function adaptation level, but at the comprehensive genomic level.
Why is that surprising?
> In my opinion, there is a big difference between:
>
> 1) natural selection favoring genomes in which mutations have a (slightly)
> better chance of being advantageous (or perhaps a bit lower chance of being
> detrimental), and
>
> 2) scientific evidence that an intelligent designer must have arranged the
> genomes and/or be directing the mutations that modify them.
Agreed. The entire ID program in the arena of biology is predicated on the
proposition that the success of evolution is radically dependent on natural
processes being supplemented by occasional episodes of non-natural,
form-imposing intervention by an unidentified, unembodied, choice-making
agent. ID's central claim is about the need for supplementary non-natural
intervention to make sense of genealogical continuity and the common
ancestry thesis.
If I understand Caporale's thesis correctly, she is saying, in effect,
"Nonsense! What you need to do instead is to develop an enriched concept of
what a robust formational economy of natural processes is actually capable
of doing." If Caporale is correct, the intervention-based ID program goes
down the drain.
Howard Van Till
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